Thousands of people’s complaints about California contractors are locked in state files – and you will never get to see them. The NBC Bay Area Responds team has been asking: Why?
When you hire a contractor, a Contractors State License Board video recommends a key step. It says, “You can use CSLB’s ‘check license tool’ to check a contractor’s license number to see if there have been any complaints against their license.”
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WATCH HEREBut our investigation has found that this tool does not show you “any” complaints against a contractor. To explain why, let’s look at Anchored Tiny Homes.
It’s the boastful ADU builder that went belly up this past summer. “I just feel so cheated,” said Cupertino customer Girija Subramanya. Many customers told us the company took unlawfully large advance payments -- tens of thousands of dollars each -- and then, the builder abandoned many projects.
“They have not been transparent about what’s going on,” said Oakland customer Alan Miller.
The state ultimately revoked Anchored’s license and disclosed 10 complaints to the public. But we just learned from the board that it actually had a total of 259 complaints about Anchored Tiny Homes.
So, why were only 10 made public for you to see?
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Former Anchored Chief Operating Officer Chris Pace told us this past year that Anchored – and other contractors for that matter – could keep complaints out of public view by getting upset customers to settle.
“Ultimately, it would settle on, ‘how much money do we need to settle on so we get you to take this complaint away,’” Pace said. In notifying the state that they settled a customer’s complaint, Pace said the builder kept its license record clean.
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SIGN UP “It would just be taken off the books,” he said. “And things would go back to normal.”
NBC Bay Area has spent the past few months investigating Pace’s claim – about Anchored and other contractors. Lawyers for Anchor’s co-founders did not respond. But the state contractor board did. It confirmed that, contrary to its own video, the state’s license lookup tool does not show you all complaints about a contractor. Thanks to state law, you will never see thousands of them.
“Ultimately, CSLB’s mission is to protect consumers,” said CSLB’s Katherine White. She explained that when a board rep takes a complaint in its call center, the law only lets them post it online for you to see if they investigate and find a ‘probable violation’ of state law. Here’s the thing: if a contractor settles with a customer, the CSLB typically does not investigate.
“Typically, if we’ve taken care of it with the consumer and the contractor, it’s an agreeable situation with them both, essentially we move on.”
When the board moves on, you do not get to see the complaint at all. It turns out that happens a lot. We requested state data for the past five years. The board’s numbers show it has closed and kept secret more than 10,000 consumer complaints “prior to investigation.” That’s ten thousand complaints you don’t get to see, even if a customer might have accused the contractor of breaking the law. The board told us most of the 10,000 complaints hidden from public view are minor. But it couldn’t tell us how many are major.
“We’d have to look at the individual cases. we’d have to see what is happening here,” White said. We noted that no one is doing that work. “We have to handle the complaints we get on a regular basis, White responded. “We get about a thousand complaints a month.”
Anchored customers like the Sonza family in Rohnert park are furious. They say they lost more than $200,000. When they signed on -- near Anchored’s end -- they say the state license page showed zero complaints. We now know dozens were stacking up out of public view.
“There is no protection for the consumer,” said Steve Sonza. “If multiple people are reporting this… multiple red flags... somebody has to be monitoring this and regulating this,” his wife said.
After we started asking questions, the contractor board told us it’s looking to beef up its Multiple Offender Unit. “We want to be more proactive,” White said. White also said CSLB is conducting a new audit, reviewing how to flag contractors who’re getting lots of complaints -- rather than just shelving those files when people settle.
“Is there a way of us changing some of our practices? To make sure we’re holding that delicate balance between wanting to help a consumer with their situation now but also wanting to help protect the public in the future for that same contractor,” she said.
We’ll let you know what that audit shows. Given the gap we found, it’s more important than ever to do research beyond looking up a contractor’s license. Insist on getting references. Meet real customers. See the builder’s work, firsthand. Ask questions; demand answers. Finally: do not pay a contractor more than $1,000 up front. $1,000 is the maximum California law allows them to take at the start of a project.
